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Joan Hessayon award

Geography was a bit of an issue when the original duo of Write Romantics formed, as Jo lives in Kent and I live in North Yorkshire so all our communication was in the virtual world. When we became ten, geography presented an even greater challenge as we weren’t all based in the UK. We had a huge geographical spread from Cumbria to Kent, the North Yorkshire Coast to Brighton on the south coast, and Wales to Australia.

Personally, I quite fancied the idea of a WR pilgrimage to Australia to meet with Helen R, but I’m not sure we could have quite pulled it off! Helen did, however, move back to the UK so it was just the length and breadth of the country to navigate if we wanted to meet up. And, amazingly, we’ve managed to spend quite a lot of time together over the years…

Jessica xx

2013

We formed and bonded online, Helen P had her very first novel, The Ghost House, released as an eBook, and Rachael entered a competition called ‘So You Think You Can Write’ that changed her life (although she didn’t know it yet). And we began to meet face to face…

When the Write Romantics formed as a collective of ten, the only members who had met were Alys and Jessica. They didn’t know each other very well, though, as they’d only briefly chatted after lunch at an RNA event in York.

Alys and Jessica arranged a couple of get-togethers for a drink and dessert in a pub halfway between their homes in York and Scarborough (sticky toffee pudding – nom nom!) but the first opportunity for a larger group of WRs meeting was the RNA’s annual conference in Sheffield, held in July 2013. Jo, Alys, Helen P, Rachael and Jessica all attended. It was exceptionally hot and the air con wasn’t working which was slightly traumatic, but it was so lovely to be able to meet up with some of the group in person after months of chatting online.

Also in the summer, Alys connected with Hull-based Sharon via social media and they arranged to meet up to discuss all things writing. Jessica was invited to join them and the three of them met in Bridlington on the North Yorkshire Coast. Sharon was in the NWS for the first time but having major doubts about her writing, thinking she might not even submit. No way were Alys and Jessica going to let that happen! Thankfully Sharon changed her mind and the rest is history.

2014

The year started with great news. Rachael had been delighted with top 10 success at in the ‘So You Think You Can Write’ competition, and resolved to keep trying. She didn’t need to, though. In January, she got “the call” from Mills and Boon and fulfilled a lifelong ambition to become one of their authors, with her first book released in September. This seemed to open the floodgates later that year when Jo and Jessica both signed a publishing deal with So Vain Books, Deirdre and Helen R joined Crooked Cat and Alys secured an agent. New member, Sharon, joined us and we launched a charity anthology called Winter Tales (see yesterday’s post for great news on this).

Our second year together brought another opportunity for Rachael, Deirdre and Helen P to meet up at the RNA summer party where Helen’s debut, The Ghost House, was up for the Joan Hessayon Award.

A couple of months later was the RNA annual conference at Harper Collins agricultural college in Telford. It was another incredibly hot few days, which didn’t make the farming aromas any more pleasant but the company was certainly very pleasant! Alys, Deirdre, Helen P, Helen R, Jackie, Rachael and Jessica all attended the conference which, to this day, remains the biggest gathering of WRs in one place at one time.

Lynne wasn’t able to join us for the conference but she drove to a pub near the venue to meet some of the group for lunch and an afternoon of chat and laughter before the conference started.

Sharon was invited to join the group in the September when original member Lorraine dipped out, and, over the next few years, Alys, Sharon and Jessica met up when they could; slightly easier given that they’re all Yorkshire-based.

2015

A big year for debut novels from the WRs with traditionally-published releases for Helen R, Jo, Jessica, and Deirdre. Sharon, Lynne, Alys and Helen R all released debut indie novels.

Lynne’s debut pocket novel was shortlisted for the Joan Hessayon Award, meeting up with some of the others at the awards ceremony. Jackie, Helen R and Rachael met up at the RNA conference in London.

In August, Helen P and Rachael had an amazing opportunity to travel to New York for the Romance Writers of America 35th annual conference and the Harlequin party. The rest of us didn’t think we could have got away with gate-crashing the event but would very much have liked to try!

The Yorkshire contingent continued to meet when diaries allowed.

2016 – 2017

Books came out thick and fast across 2016 and 2017 including the debut release for Jackie. Jessica parted company with her publisher in late 2016 and re-launched her books as an indie writer. New publishing deals were secured by Jo with Accent Press, Helen P with Bookoutre, and Helen R with Orion.

Some of the WRs met up at the RNA conferences or at the summer/winter parties in London. For the rest, it was sporadic meet-ups wherever possible. Sharon and Alys separately met up with Lynne whilst on holiday in Glastonbury, not too far from where Lynne’s based in The Cotswolds, Jo met with Deirdre on a day out in Brighton, and Jo and Alys have met up when Alys has been visiting family down south.

Alys, Sharon and Jessica – the Yorkshire contingent – managed to coordinate a meet-up as a three near Christmas 2016 but have since only managed to meet up as pairs since then as diary coordination has proved a massive challenge.

In late 2016, Jessica met up with Jo, Deirdre and Helen R whilst working in London one weekend, although a late train deprived her of 90 minutes of valuable writing chat. How rude!

Jessica was particularly grateful to have Sharon support her at a Writer’s Talk at a café in Scarborough called The Seastrand in April 2017. It was part of a big Writers’ Event they were hosting … but nobody showed up!

Sharon and Jessica were delighted when Jo visited Leeds for a weekend with friends as it gave them a perfect excuse to meet up, have some food, and talk writing. Perfect way to spend a day!
For some time, we mooted the idea of getting together and, at the start of 2017, decided to pin everyone down to a date. We chose a reasonably central location of Derby and a weekend in November 2017. Eight of the group committed to the date; not quite a full compliment but it was certainly very close and would have been the biggest meet-up to date.

Unfortunately, some of the eight couldn’t make it when the date got closer so it was a smaller event than hoped, but any opportunity to meet up and talk about writing is welcome, no matter how many are there. Jo, Sharon, Jackie, Helen P and Jessica met up on the Friday but Jo and Helen could only stay the one night so it was a cosy trio the following day and evening. As an added bonus, Jo managed to meet up with Lynne en route.

2018

We’re a third of the way through the year and there’ve been a few releases already, with loads more planned. Sharon had exciting news, leaving her day job to become a full-time writer. This week will actually see the start of this exciting new chapter in her life. Helen P will be releasing her first indie novel and there are several other exciting possibilities on the horizon.

Jo and Jessica met in London in February when Jessica had a weekend working in London, and Jessica and Lynne met a couple of weeks ago when Lynne holidayed in North Yorkshire.

Sharon and Jessica have plans to meet up twice this month, firstly to celebrate Sharon becoming a full-time writer and then to attend a talk by the incredibly talented Ruth Jones as part of Scarborough’s Books by the Beach Literary Festival. In May, they’re both attending a lunch in York organised by Anne Williams of Book Connectors, and are excited that Alys will be attending too.

The RNA conference will be in Leeds this year so, being the closest it’s ever been to their homes, Sharon and Jessica have already signed up, as has Rachael. Jackie and Helen P will hopefully attend too. Sharon and Rachael haven’t met yet so this will be a great opportunity for them to do so, leaving Deirdre and Sharon, plus Helen R and Sharon as the only WRs who haven’t met yet; something we must rectify soon.

Sharon and Jessica will also be going to the York Tea in September and I’m sure that there will be lots of opportunities for WRs to meet up at RNA parties and whilst on holiday in the UK.

So, as you can see, we haven’t let the geography stop us from meeting up. I’d love to think that, one day, we could all be in the same location at the same time but I’m not sure we’ll manage to coordinate ten busy diaries.

As a group, we are all very different. Age-wise, we have a 30-year age-gap from oldest to youngest. We represent massively differing careers: farmer, police, social worker, HR professional, tutor, medical receptionist, and cabin crew to name a selection. And, although we all write romance, we represent many different genres from fantasy to thriller to cosy to gritty true-life. Definitely very different!

Yet, somehow, it works.

Please join us for the next two days where we’ll be exploring five things we wish we’d known five years ago.

I have been very fortunate that two years ago I got a place on the RNA New Writer’ Scheme. Last year when my book was published I was entered into the Joan Hessayon New Writer’s award and on Thursday May 22nd I set off to London for the first time since I was seventeen years old.
As my train pulled out of Barrow and went past the beautiful Abbey ruins and Abbotswood which had been the inspiration for my novel The Ghost House it actually sunk in that I was now a published writer and on my way to celebrate my success. It was an amazing feeling sitting on that train and I felt very lucky and humbled that after all the years of trying and the rejections that I had done it. I had made my dream come true and there is no finer feeling.

I was very excited to be meeting so many of the lovely writers that I speak to on a regular basis on Facebook and Twitter, especially our very own Deirdre and Rachael. I was also a nervous wreck. I’m not very good in social situation’s but I was determined that I was going to enjoy the day and night for what it was.
I had booked a room in The Royal Overseas League where the party was being held so I didn’t have to worry about being late or finding my way back. I spent an hour giving myself a pep talk before going down to meet up with all the other lovely Joan Hessayon Contenders. It was a pleasure meeting so many fellow writers, especially Jill Steeples and Annie Lyons who also write for Carina. Jill bought the first drinks to calm our nerves before the dreaded official photo, which actually wasn’t that bad and the photographer was lovely. Once the photo was over I could breathe a sigh of relief and relax a little, it was nice to meet so many fellow writers and soon my editors from Carina arrived with a couple of bottles of Prosecco which was the first time I’d ever tasted it and it certainly won’t be the last, how have I not discovered this before I asked myself?

Eventually Pia Fenton the RNA chair took to the podium and we all raised a toast to the lovely Joan Hessayon and her husband Dr Hessayon who sponsors the award every year in memory of his wife. We all lined up in front of the projector and listened as Pia read out everyone’s blurb; it was lovely cheering and celebrating so many début authors’ success and very inspiring. Of course there could only be one winner and that was the lovely Jo Thomas for her novel The Oyster Catcher as we all whooped with delight and applauded I couldn’t help but feel a touch relieved it wasn’t me. I hadn’t even thought about a speech and by this stage I was positively melting and a little bit tipsy.
It was a wonderful night and I felt so privileged to have been a part of it, the organisers worked so hard to make it very special and I would like to thank them all from the bottom of my heart.

I’m looking forward to next year’s party already where I will be able to raise a glass or two of Prosecco to my fellow Write Romantics who are on their way to making their own dreams come true 🙂

We’re delighted to welcome another guest to the Saturday Spotlight in the form of Helena Fairfax. We have interviewed several published and aspiring writers in the past but asked Helena if she’d like to be interviewed or go ‘freestyle’. Helena decided to give the latter a whirl so, as the title says, this is everything she’s learned from her time in the RNA’s NWS and an insight into her writing world. Over to you, Helena …

Have you ever sat on a grimy commuter train, looked round at all the other pale, exhausted commuters, wet clothes gently steaming in the fug, then closed your eyes and thought, ‘I wish, I wish I was in the south of France?’

A few years ago I was escaping inside my own head in this way, when I had an idea for a romance novel. Every morning after that, rammed next to my fellow sufferers on the 7.25, I’d try and make my idea come alive in my notebook. In my lunch hour, I’d sit round the back of my factory, joining the lads from the estate on the canal. Whilst the boys fished in the drizzle for whatever lurked in those murky depths, I’d be crossing out everything I’d written that morning and scribbling down some more. Instead of dealing with production deadlines and irate customers, I was in the south of France with my red hot boss. It seemed like a sort of game – my characters were something to keep me amused during the dreary nine to five.

And then I joined the RNA’s New Writers’ Scheme, and to my surprise, my gorgeous French hero was no longer just a pleasant daydream in my head. To my reader at the RNA, this was a real, breathing character, who needed a motivation and a goal. My wispy daydream was a mere outline, my reader told me, and needed to shape up. This was my first, delightful experience as an aspiring writer. I’d found a reader who was taking my character seriously, and was helping me put solid flesh on his fragile bones.

I submitted twice to the New Writers’ Scheme. Here’s a list of some of the other lessons I learned that changed me from a daydreaming scribbler to one who finally became a published author:

 To the readers who buy your book, your characters aren’t just ideas in your head. They are living and breathing people. They MUST have clear motivations and reasons for their behaviour. Readers expect to know WHY they act the way they do. What is it in the characters’ past that has made them this way?

 A romance story has to contain emotional tension. As my reader said, ‘It’s about why the hero and heroine, so obviously attracted to each other, not only won’t admit they have fallen in love but feel that they can’t….Your hero and heroine should have goals that are in direct opposition to each other.’

 There must be a situation which forces the hero and heroine together. If not, why don’t they just say goodbye on page four, if their goals are in opposition to one another? What will force them to stay together throughout the course of a whole novel?

 Emotional conflict must be sustained throughout the course of the novel. To quote my reader again: ‘When you’re structuring a romance, you should be thinking about the plot not so much as moving your characters from A to B but as a series of situations that test their fears and bring their goals into conflict.’ I learned how much skill is involved in keeping this emotional conflict sustained in an interesting way!

 The synopsis. It’s vital that the synopsis shows: characterisation, motivation, cause of emotional tension, and reason why the characters are forced together.

 The dreaded rewrite. After taking my reader’s advice the first time I submitted, this meant that I had to substantially rewrite my manuscript. But I took heart from my reader’s last words: ‘This is a story with lots of potential and although it does need some restructuring, and yes, some extra work, I’m sure it won’t be as bad as you think once you get started!’ And my reader was right. At first, I was daunted, but now I never mind rewriting. As a perfectionist, I enjoy the feeling that I’m manipulating the words to get the best story I can.

 Handling rejection. Of course I was disappointed the novel wasn’t right at first, but the accompanying letter from the RNA’s president gave positive advice: ‘Always bear in mind that most published authors have experience of rejection. All writers, published and unpublished, need to be tenacious and determined…Have faith in yourself!’

 I resubmitted the entire novel the next year. This taught me another great lesson – in order to get a book written, you have to sit down and WRITE. No excuses or prevarication. If I’d missed the scheme’s deadline, that would have been it. Now it wasn’t just a pleasant hobby. I had to force myself to write, whether I felt like it or not, in order to get the book finished on time.

In May last year my daydream finally became reality, with the release of The Silk Romance. The months of agonising and toil over my novel, times in which I felt inadequate and had moments of swearing I’d never try and write a book again, were all forgotten that day, and I had a massive smile on my face.

Of course I’m still agonising over my notebooks, but now I write much faster, with fewer rewrites, because through the RNA I’ve learned several work-changing lessons.

The Silk Romance is a contender for the Joan Hessayon Award at the RNA’s summer party in May, and I intend to be there, partying my party stilettos off!

If you’d like to find out more about the French hero I daydreamed about, here’s the blurb to The Silk Romance:

How do you choose between the people you love most?

Sophie Challoner is sensible and hard-working, and a devoted carer of her father. The night her grandmother throws a party for her in Paris, Sophie does something reckless she can never forget.

Jean-Luc Olivier has retired from his glamorous life as a racing driver to run a silk mill in Lyon. Years after they first met, fate reunites Jean-Luc with Sophie in this most romantic of cities, and he’s determined not to let her go a second time.

But is Jean-Luc still the same man he was? It seems he has a secret of his own. And when disaster strikes back home in London, Sophie is faced with a choice—stay in this wonderful city with the man she loves, or return to her family to keep a sacred promise she made her mother.

Our guest on the blog this week is Rhoda Baxter. Rhoda started off in the South of England and pinged around the world a bit until she ended up in the North of England, where the cakes are better. Along the way she collected one husband, two kids, a few (ahem) extra stone in weight and a DPhil in molecular biology (but not necessarily in that order). She had a childhood ambition to be an astronaut or at least 5 feet tall. Having failed at both of these, she now writes humorous novels instead.

Her first novel, Patently in Love was a contender for the RNA Joan Hessayon Award and was a top ten finalist in the 2012 Preditors and Editors poll for romance reads. Her third novel, Dr January will be published by Choc Lit Publishing in autumn 2014.

Hi Rhoda, welcome to the Write Romantics blog and thank you for agreeing to be our guest this week. We’d love to start by asking you a little bit about your writing journey so far and what was the very first thing you did when you heard you’d got a publishing deal?

Thank you so much for inviting me in for a chat. It’s nice to sit here in the warm when it’s so wet and cold outside.

My writing journey was pretty long. I won’t bore you with the details (if you really want to know, there’s a blog post about it here: http://rhodabaxter.com/2013/10/25/two-emails-abo…22nd-of-a-book/). I went to a talk once where they took a poll of the authors around the table as to how many books they wrote before they were published. The average was 3.5 books. I’d written 3 books and was on my fourth by the time Patently in Love was picked up by a publisher.

Yes, please, I’d love a cup of tea. Milk please. No sugar. Thanks.

In all honesty, I can’t remember what I thought when I first got the email. It was a mad old time as I’d just started a new job after moving from Oxfordshire to East Yorkshire and my youngest was still only a tiny wee baby. I do remember buying a celebratory cheesecake though. Very nice it was too.

What are you most looking forward to about your publication with Choc Lit and moving away from the e-book only approach?

Without a doubt, it’s the idea of having a physical book in my hands. Having a book only in ebook format should be no different to have a print book – real people still buy them and read them and review them. But there’s something about the physical book that you can put on a book shelf and stroke and cuddle… I think it’s a generational thing. We grew up with paper books and they ‘feel’ more real to us than ebooks. My Mum reads my books on her computer, but doesn’t really feel they’re ‘real’. My kids, on the other hand, are perfectly at home with ebooks and print books alike. They tend to get jam on things though and a Kindle is easier to wipe clean than a paper book.

I’m also looking forward to doing some real life promotion for my books. So far I’ve concentrated on doing everything online, because I’ve only had ebooks to promote. When I have a print book I can take along with me, I will try and do some talks to libraries and at local events.

Lastly, of course, I’m looking forward to the celebratory cheesecake I’m going to treat myself to. Mmmm… cake… Sorry, zoned out there for a moment. What was the next question?

Do you have any writing superstitions e.g. writing in the same place, using a certain pen etc?

In an ideal world, I would. I’d have a special desk (very tidy, naturally), and a special mug and a special pair of pants to wear when I’m writing. In reality, my desk looks nothing like that, so I end up writing my books sitting in bed at the end of the day.

I don’t really mind, so long as I get to write. I do wish I could see the surface of my desk now and again though.

What are you working on now and what are your writing goals for the next 5 years?

5 years! You make it sound like it’s normal to have a plan! (What do you mean it is? Damn. That explains a lot). It’s not possible to plan that far ahead because life tends to get in the way. If you’d told me four years ago that I’d be relocating to the North East, with a three month old baby and a three year old in tow, whilst DH and I both start new jobs and I try to get a writing career off the ground, I’d have laughed at you on the grounds that no one is THAT mental.

What am I working on now? I’ve just submitted the 2015 book called Please Release Me (which is set in a hospice) to Choc Lit. I’m trying to figure out what to write next. Something with the whole email/prose mix again, I think. I have my characters, but need to figure out what happens to them. I’ve also got to do some promotion for the Truly, Madly, Deeply Anthology which is coming out in February. I’m very excited to have my story included in a book that’s got stories by Katie Fforde, Judy Astley, Carole Matthews and other famous people.

How do you keep creating new and entirely different characters as you write more and more books?

I don’t know. They just turn up. Sorry, that’s not a good answer, is it? But it’s true. It’s like Paddingtion Station in my imagination. Characters turn up in my head and I have to find stories for them. I usually find the men easier to think up than the women. I love my heroes.

I don’t do character sheets and character interviews like some people do. I’m too lazy for that. Quite often I write my way into the characters by writing a few extra scenes before the story really starts so that I can get a feel for their voice. Sometimes there’s a key aspect I have to get right before they ‘click’. Once that happens, it’s easy to hear and see them.

I’ve never tried to analyse where these people came from, in case they stop coming. If it ain’t broke…
It sounds like your professional life and your writing persona are two different worlds. How do you cope with the different approaches to writing and has this ever caused you any conflict?

My work writing is very analytical and matter of fact. Details need to be spelled out. My fiction writing is about subtlety and emotion. In that sense they are very different. On the other hand, the technical writing needs to be structured, with all the introductory information in place, arguments made and neatly tied up into the conclusion. The same is true of a novel.

With work, I’m allowed to be boring in what I write (apparently, people don’t like jokes in their technical summaries. Huh). With fiction boring your reader is a definite no-no.

One of the Write Romantics, Alex, is also a lawyer and it’s not a world that has ever made her think of romance fiction. What gave you the idea for Patently in Love?

Marshall from Patently in Love has been around in my head for a long long time. When I was plotting the book,I realised that the combination of email and prose would work really well as an office romance. So I picked an office I knew and used it as a setting. I didn’t use anyone I knew as characters, but I did include a few jokes about the obsession with hierarchy that seemed to be prevalent in that environment. It also meant that I didn’t need to cross check patent related bits of the plot. (A good thing too because one of the big IP blogs reviewed the book. It would have been awful if they’d found a glaring error!)

Who is your favourite character from any of the books that you have written so far and was (s)he based on anyone in particular?

My favourite character of all is Hibs, the hero of the next book Dr January (due to be released in autumn by Choc Lit). He has a PhD in molecular biology, long dark hair, lovely high cheekbones and is an expert in karate. He’s really funny and sexy and I had a crush on him when I wrote it.

Hibs wasn’t based in anyone real (if only!), but after I wrote the book, I realised I’d effectively taken the character of Edward Cullen from Twilight and split him into two men. The lovely, adoring, caring side (in Hibs) and the controlling, domineering, stalkery side (in Gordon). Both men are gorgeous – naturally.

We’ve heard that some writers use pictures they find, of celebrities or sometimes photographs that they just happen upon, to inform the physical descriptions of their characters and we wondered if you did this or, if not, how you form a mental picture of your characters’ physical qualities?

I don’t do that, although I should. If I found a picture of Hibs from Dr January, I’d definitely enjoy looking at him from time to time.

The mental picture of my characters tend to start fuzzy and solidify as I write the introductory scenes. I know I’ll cut those scenes out eventually, but they’re still useful for finding out who the characters are. Weirdly, I often forget what colour their eyes are, so I need a post it on my laptop screen to remind me.

What piece of advice would you give yourself about writing if you could go back to your pre-publication days?

Remember that it’s a long game. Your first book is not the only book you’ll write (in fact, it’s not even the best book you’ll ever write because you’ll learn and grow as a writer with each subsequent book). Have patience and keep going. You’ll get your break eventually

Oh, and get some sleep, while you still can.

What are the best and worst things about being a writer?

The best thing – you’re never alone. There’s people in your head all the time.

The worst thing – you’re never alone. There’s people in your head all the time, insisting that you write stuff down.

Anything else you’d like to share with us or advice you can give would be gratefully received!

Write stuff you want to read. Even if the first draft is crap.

Find a good critique partner (or join the NWS!) and listen to what they say. You don’t have to agree with everything they say, but make sure you give it good consideration before you dismiss it.

Keep going. The more you write, the better you’ll get. All authors were unpublished writers once.

Read how to books. You won’t learn anything new, but it may shift something you already knew into a new light.

Read a lot of books in your genre. Call it market research if you like.

Enjoy it! Otherwise, why do it?

Thank you very much for having me over. It was a lovely cup of tea.

Good luck with your writing careers. I’m sure it won’t be long before you’re all published.

Find out more about Rhoda:

She can be found wittering on about science, comedy and cake on her website www.rhodabaxter.com or on Facebook or Twitter (@rhodabaxter).